Nightfire

Distributed by EA Games / MGM Interactive

This is my first review of a 007 computer game, I have purchased TND & TWINE versions previously but still to complete. I've come late in life to these adventure games which I find interesting, exciting but annoying at times. I'm much better with driving games likes GT3 & Burnout 2 but weak with first-person shooters like Timesplitters due to limited patience.

Back to 007 nightfire, the game's opening setting is New Year's Eve in Paris. Our agent is in a helicopter and must save French agent, Dominique Paradis who is being car chased around the streets. To help us novices get to grips with this new interactive game, we are helped during this pre-title mission: Paris Prelude with key strokes on screen plus a 'walkthrough' in the manual. After shooting up some cars, Q drives by remote control the new Aston Martin Vanquish into place for 007 to drop-in with Dominique. Next it's a drive after an explosives truck to stop a big bang. On completion a tinkle of the champ glasses and fireworks to celebrate the New Year.

A good Bond movie-type title sequence follows with the game's song ending with a whisper of ".. nightfire" and computer Brosnan twisting to strike the gun pose. Now the game starts and you have to progress through 11 more missions from The Exchange to Equinox. Along the way you experience being 007 shooting baddies who crumble well when shot unlike some other games.

To make it easier (?) for players of my standard, there are 3 levels - Operative, Agent, or 00Agent - TND & TWINE only have 2 levels. Unlike other action games, once you've completed a mission you may try at the next level rather than start from Mission 1 each time. You choose a Codename to save your progress.

The new story has Bond investigating an industrialist, Raphael Drake and along the way meets some baddies & curvy beauties. Now if you took all the game's wide-screen action scenes which moves each mission's narrative and put them together, it would make a good tv special like children's tv series Max Steel ( five, Sat ). Good accompanying music adds to the excitement. Hey Pierce should be worried as his computer-self performs his own stunts ! Alas the down-side is he looks and moves like him but when he opens his mouth, he sounds nothing like him instead we get a posh English accent - weird ! On earlier 007 games, the voice artist at least tries to sound like him. Gadget master Q also appears but doesn't look like Llewelyn or Cleese and sounds like the younger version in the cartoon series James Bond Jnr.

Apart from the missions, there is a Multiplayer section which I assumed was only for multiplayers - no there's a single player option. Now think Timesplitters with the chance to chase and shoot characters around famous Bond sets ( e.g. Fort Knox ). Great fun with different variations of your own choice.

From this inexperienced player's viewpoint, the missions are challenging with excellent graphics but sometimes frustrating, despite the hints, without a needed strategy manual - an extra purchase. The best experience for me ( so far ) was driving the Vanquish with its gadgets. Game use is made easier for guns and gadgets with the directional buttons. Well worth the rental and a future buy - would have liked a demo movie to run when console left unattended. The game disc includes a DAD trailer.